Jagten

Of course he can and will improve. This is just my opinion of his ceiling, which I hope is proven wrong.

I said he isn’t great at it (my point being about developing elite skills) and one sample of an open-space carry does’t offer a low variance counter. His take-on stats are low (he doesn’t do it often and isn’t very successful), and he doesn’t generate a huge amount of downstream expected goals from this. Not that this is essential (Salah is also not fantastic at this).

I agree his out-of-possession game is his best attribute, along with his attitude. He cuts inside because he isn’t a great progressive carrier and he isn’t good at take-ons. I’m not saying he’s bad, and he’s probably better than I thought he could be, but I don't see elite talent, is all.

I still don’t get what elite talents he has or is likely to develop. He’s decent and works well for Howe but I don’t see beyond that.

Our best player, who we also happen to have nobody else like. The risk/return in trying to replace this guy at even 100mm sucks.

I get the sentiment, but nobody who has ever achieved anything really great thinks like this.

Obviously this is one significant part, but we’ll also be accumulating significant load in training. We have no idea how that is managed, periodized, or individual risk is approximated. Based on evidence, good reason to think it’s not well.

Desperate for technical attackers

I think at this point it’s clear someone is bad at their job

I reckon it was an MRes with "data science" components in the dissertation, but who knows. He may be excellent, but as someone who does this for a living, it's not a CV I would have looked at, and a hire on paper that surprised me.

Not my interpretation of what that means, given Loughborough does not offer that course (?). Given undergrad, much more likely to be have involved some linear regression in excel. My point in highlighting this is, in comparison to e.g. Liverpool and Man City (and those in US analytics), I think we're looking at something very different. For example, Liverpool's director of research did his PhD in physics at Harvard, worked at CERN, spent 4 years applying his research to tracking in sports, before working at Liverpool. Clearly elite talent who could work at most hedge funds, which is what we should have got IMO

If anyone is interested, we hired a "head of data" to build out our non-existent analytics department who has no training in statistics. No comment.

Yep. Management group is really a govt-recommended front for SA. It's a management contract, and it can most definitely be terminated. Amanda doesn't really own anything, whatever companies house might say.

This isn't a model FWIW, which you would need to infer latent talent. It's a signal but the noise is high. I think he might end up good enough but not in the middle.

Disagree. I think Anderson is a decent ball carrier but I don't see much else, or any other attribute that can be at our desired level.

https://twitter.com/OptaAnalyst/status/1734694147490288110 That should be it for the bald freak, but glad it won't be

Tonali was/is seen as one of Howe's hybrid 8s, where we valued, above anything, his out-of-possession talent. I think he was the wrong ID personally, and he's not in any way a Bruno replacement.

Maybe, but they've over-performed underlying expectations. Built a good squad though, and a joint XI might be uncomfortable for us.

Opta has them at 1.42 vs your 1.23 FWIW. Close, either way

I think the median talent of our midfield is lower than those around us, and the selection is too heavily skewed toward players who progress via pressing and ball carrying. Without Bruno, it looks bad. We could do with more technicians.

With one elite player.

Levels between us. Phenomenal stuff.

Ah, I'm a sympathiser. Elite players will generally outperform their expected goals fwiw.

Because biggest xG over-performance in the league

I think we'd be much better placed if we had a functioning data department to better approximate stress, but we don't